Tiny gamma camera quickly captures radiotracers in hi-rez 3D

Japanese scientists have developed a gamma-ray detector small enough to hold with one hand yet powerful enough to render high-resolution 3D molecular imaging of anatomic structures in mice.

Using radiotracers to visualize uptake in three sites—iodine in the thyroid, strontium in the bones and zinc in the liver—the team used what it’s calling an ultracompact Compton camera to image the tracers “in nearly real-time with a resolution of 3 mm, equivalent to PET,” according to a news item from Waseda University in Tokyo.

“The measurement time took 10 minutes per angle, so we were able to obtain an image taken from 12 angles in just two hours,” says one of the researchers. “The time could be reduced even more by using multiple Compton cameras.”